WSJ: Apple dropped plans for a TV set “more than a year ago”

There have been predictions about an Apple television set so often and for so long that it's become a sort of running gag among Apple watchers, but a new report from the Wall Street Journal has poured yet more cold water on those forecasts. The typical "people familiar with the matter" tell the WSJ that Apple had "a small team" working on a TV set for a few years, but that the team had been disbanded and its members reassigned to other projects "more than a year ago."

The main problem, according to the report, was a lack of innovative features that would distinguish an Apple TV set from its competitors. The team experimented with "ultra-high-definition" displays, TVs that looked like clear panes of glass when turned off, and FaceTime cameras that could reposition themselves to focus on whoever was currently speaking. None of these were deemed good enough to sell the idea of a television set.